RIawards 2022: expert intranet awards winners
#RIawards is a project that is designed to develop the intranet and digital workplace industry, encourage and motivate the best cases, strong intranet leaders, and their teams. Projects are evaluated by an expert jury — winners, jury members, or founders of international intranet and digital workplace awards.
This is the third year of the RIawards. Applications were accepted in November-December 2021. The results of the jury voting were summed up in February, and the Rivelty.Intranet team started preparing for the awards ceremony. At that time, we hadn’t known yet that such difficult times lay ahead of us. In March, we made the decision not to have a gala ceremony, as we had done before.
At the same time, we consider it important to support intranet teams and their leaders, to encourage those who every day create digital tools for the employees and invest their strength and energy in them. Each project is the result of hard work, and each winning team has the right to receive its own award. Therefore, we have adjusted the format of the event from a gala ceremony for the community to a private dinner only for the finalists of the RIawards 2022.
The event was sponsored by QSOFT, a local developer of the largest corporate portals, and INTRY, the first out-of-the-box solution for Sharepoint in Russia.
RIawards 2022 jury
The jury of RIawards 2022 included 7 experts with 10+ years of experience and outstanding achievements in the industry: winners of international intranet awards, their founders, and jury members.
Catherine Grenfell— honorary jury member of the Russian Intranet Awards, former community manager at StepTwo Forum, for over 10 years jury member and organizer of the Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards, and the Digital Employee Experience Conference at StepTwo;
Sam Marshall — founder of Clearbox Consulting, jury member for the Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards and the Interact Intranet Awards;
Giacomo Mason — internal communications consultant, founder of Intranet Management, founder and jury member of the Intranet Italia Champions;
Olga Bogomolova — ex-head of Knowledge Management Department at Domodedovo airport, winner of three international awards;
Egor Petrov — Head of Products in Financial Services at M.Video-Eldorado, the owner of M.Video-Eldorado intranet, winner of the 2020 Russian Intranet Awards and Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards.
Andrey Kravchenko — director of business development at UPlatforma, winner of the 2020 Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards
Anton Muzhelskiy — director of digital transformation at VEB.RF, previously Head of the User Services at DOM.RF, winner of the Russian Intranet Awards, Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards and Digital Workplace of the Year 2021.
Award prize
The winners of the RIawards receive recognition from international and local experts, invitations to conferences, publication of a case study in the Rivelty’s expert blog, as well as a unique award prize.
The quality of applications, expertise, and the level of preparation of the teams are so strong, so for the second year, we have gold and silver awards in each category. The gold is awarded to the teams with the highest number of points in the category, and the silver to the projects that are slightly behind the winners.
This year, jury members had to choose the best in six nominations:
— Intranet of the Year
— Intranet Leader of the Year
— Intranet Team of the Year
— Essential Intranet
— Mobile Intranet
— Intranet Promotion Campaign
Winners of the #RIawards 2022
#RIawards results once again highlighted inspiring leaders, strong intranet teams, and sophisticated, modern projects to help ease employees’ work. This is a great motivation for other excellent intranet leaders and teams to launch new or renovate existing digital workplace solutions, to overcome various pain points and obstacles in engaging management and employees, and to get rewarded and recognized not only inside the companies, but also among colleagues in the local intranet community.
So here are the exceptional drivers of our intranet community this year:
Main nomination «Intranet of the Year»
The prize in the most important nomination of the Russian Intranet Awards goes to a project with the highest scores in all criteria and the largest number of jury votes in this nomination. It is a mature project recognized as the best in all areas of intranet development: the best concept, successful implementation, outstanding results, effective promotion, excellent teamwork, and inspiring leadership.
Gold winner in the nomination “Intranet of the Year” — Gazprom Neft, Regional Sales Division
“The rock solid approach to user research and design shines through in what the team has achieved. The results demonstrate that they have improved business processes and made life easier for staff by streamlining data and integrations, especially around vacation planning and overtime. Well done”.
The intranet of Gazprom Neft, RSD is a single ecosystem of the three digital portals and tools for employees: personal services were launched from scratch, the corporate portal has undergone significant modernization, and the service portal was created to support business tasks. Team went through massive rounds of approvals to create the ecosystem for 15 000 petroleum stations employees and office staff in HQ. Mature approach, audience deep research, tens of different tools and integrations showed impressive results.
“The intranet perfectly complements and enhances the services for employees provided by the company. Excellent implementation of the required functionality through the transformation of business processes and subsequent digitalization. Structural and mature approach to content organization. The team and the leader approached the organization of the digital employee experience in an ecosystem way, applying the appropriate technical solutions and methodologies in a balanced way. Outstanding results by metrics and business impact”.
Nomination «Intranet Team of the Year»
The victory in the nomination is awarded to a team for the best collaboration, and well-coordinated teamwork in overcoming all difficulties from the beginning to the end of the project. The jury evaluates the clear distribution of roles in the team, unusual approaches to problem-solving, and high project results.
Gold winner in the nomination “Intranet Team of the Year” — SIBUR
The team: Dmitry Lee, Dmitry Chernikov, Konstantin Chilikov, Alexandra Solovyova, Maria Smyslova, Ksenia Sorokoletova, Evgeny Shadrin, Alexey Slepov, Sergey Romankov.
“This is a best of breed solution. There are so many things that the team did well, including: using best practices from other tools like LinkedIn and not starting from a blank piece of paper; clearly understood the aim to create useful connections across the organization; launched at a difficult time in April 2020, but pivoted and adapted to the situation; achieving a good mix of blue and white collar workers on platform; good balance between business and social aspects of the solution”.
The SIBUR intranet team transformed the corporate portal into a social network with an accent on UGC (User Generated Content). The intranet KLIK is a single workspace for all employees. It is created by the internal development team, based on Bitrix24, with deep customization. KLIK is the one-stop for communications inside the company: emails, chats, company news, employee surveys, and easy data exchange. Intranet is available on desktop and mobile at the same time.
“Inspiration from existing social platforms to create a customized solution for SIBUR = brilliant. One of the biggest challenges internal communications face is employees going ‘off line’ to private chat groups (e.g. WhatsApp), and this solution helps solve this problem through user friendly technology and offering more integration and value than WhatsApp could offer. I really like how this submission details how they addressed the challenges they faced. Great promotional video and campaign use to entice people into the platform. I would have liked to have seen something to boost the installation rate. This is a solution that will significantly positively impact company culture and break down silos in the years to come!”
Silver winner in the nomination “Intranet Team of the Year” — FINAM
The team: Maxim Manuylov, Maria Pyatishina, Ekaterina Azbukina
“Interesting to see hybrid worker profile, and the inclusion of fun in the ‘triple-layer’ cake — it’s certainly something that comes through in the design! A goоd range of practical resources combined with a very social approach. I like the clever re-use of functionality, all leading to some impressive time savings”.
“Excellent intranet development dynamics. The creative approach to concept creation is implemented intelligently and consistently by the skilled team and maximized the potential of the platform. This intranet is a great example of reinforcing corporate culture through engagement and social networking mechanisms. Separately, I would like to note the IT implementation: the quality and consistent improvements of the digital solution. High metrics confirm that the team and the leader are doing everything right.”
FINAM’s intranet participated in RIawards for the third time. During lockdown, the majority of the FINAM’s team transitioned to remote work, but communication between employees remained just as productive, thanks to the intranet. The intranet team applied a “triple-layer cake” concept to engage as many employees as possible:
1. Fun, positivity, and activities: latest trends from popular social media to engage, user-generated content. All events start or are conducted entirely on the intranet;
2. Services and functionality: only convenient and necessary services to solve and optimize business tasks. Implementing the Digital Workplace concept and increasing employee digital comfort to the highest possible level;
3. Information and communication: modern presentation of information, live feeds, notifications, and social features in every post. Easy and fast access to necessary information through search and a chatbot.
Nomination «Intranet Leader of the Year»
The main prize in this category is awarded to the inspiring manager with excellent leadership skills, professionalism, expertise, and outstanding achievements in the industry. The calculation takes into account the results of the project and the number of votes from the jury.
Gold winner — Olga Mokhtina, X5 Group
“One portal for 400k employees is a big ask, but the team have delivered a good solution with sophisticated personalization. I particularly liked the features of the people directory and the life hacks videos, they are short and useful. I wish more intranet teams did these. Olga is an exceptional leader, her focus on continuous learning for herself, the team, and how to achieve more with the portal, bodes well for her future”.
Х5 Group is a leading retail and food market player with 339 000 employees. They went through a three years journey of collecting tens of portal solutions into a single intranet for HQ and the biggest chains with deep personalization. For the last two years, Olga Mokhtina led the intranet team to develop the product using an agile approach. The intranet grew from core functions and user stories to a modern intranet with digital workplace solutions, UGC, and gamification to engage users.
Silver winner — Anna Stepanova, Gazprombank
“A wonderful example of a clear, systematic and evidence-based project implementation. Great job with personalization. Great success awaits this project with a professional and businesslike approach of the leader.”
Personalized intranet of Gazprombank is created by experienced and awarded practitioner. Quality approach and concept development, examples of risk-management, savings on not doing some excess functionality, and a lot of UX-testing, users involvement, and mature promo approaches. Strong leader and the collaborative team went through rounds of technical and information security issues as a government bank, as well as conservative views on changes from users.
Nomination “Essential Intranet”
Winners in this new nomination are awarded for the creation or renovation of an intranet that perfectly solves the basic tasks of an intranet (vertical communications, personal account, services, directories, applications, social functions, and others). Projects with the results, that are significant for the company’s business and employees, are highly appreciated by the jury.
Gold winner in the nomination “Essential Intranet” — EVRAZ
“Delivered everything well that is needed for a successful one stop portal. Team showed a good understanding of the workforce including unique categories like junior specialists. Good focus on deskless workers with news via mobile and efforts to successfully promote this service”.
The initial intranet of EVRAZ was created more than 10 years ago and was owned by corporate communications. In order to renovate functionality, migrate to a new version of Sharepoint and redesign the existing intranet, the company went through a 4,5 years journey. After Anna Burova joined the team, in two years, the intranet turned from file storage into a tool for solving business tasks, a single information resource for employees, and an assistant for employees in their daily work. As a result, the number of intranet unique users had grown twice, and mobile app and quality services were launched.
Silver winner in the nomination “Essential Intranet” — Liga Stavok
“Solid implementation of the most important processes in an organization, good to see it all working on mobile as well. Nice use of humor in promotion campaigns. Team demonstrated a good commitment to unifying and simplifying digital services across the organization.”
Liga Stavok is a legal betting bookmaker, and has 231 betting shops in 80 cities. The intranet project is an example of the effective use of the most out-of-the-box Bitrix24 solution. The Liga Stavok’s intranet team made a renovation of the existing intranet with access to various HR services, knowledge base, KPI, and document workflow. The intranet is accessible from any device from anywhere in the world. The mobile app includes a fully automated service for betting club inspection.
Nomination “Intranet Promotion Campaign”
The prize in this category goes to the best promotion campaign of an intranet or its new services. The involvement of top managers, ambassadors, and informal leaders is important for victory in both online and offline campaigns. The jury evaluates unusual formats, unique ideas, and creative campaigns that increase intranet traffic.
Gold winner in the nomination “Intranet Promotion Campaign” — Sberentertainment
“Merging organizations and intranets is always hard. It's good to see the decision was made to repurpose an already award winning intranet. And then the extra care was taken to make sure the intranet was fit for purpose for all. The team demonstrated a sophisticated approach to the design, including integrating different HR tools and applying some game mechanics. I particularly liked how the leaders used a strong strategy to stay the course and deal with internal politics”.
An intranet that supported difficult M&A process in 2020. Sberentertainment now consists of several entertainment services. The intranet team renovated and re-branded Rambler’s existing intranet and created a unified digital platform for all employees of Sberentertainment companies. The intranet We. provides access to HR services, budgeting, online training, and assessment systems, has a recruitment database, and office space booking is available. The promotion campaign was very well organized by the intranet team and included key employee events and integrated events, interviews with the CEO and managers, contests and intangible motivation, communications with a different focus on We — more than 3.5 thousand employees received newsletters, messages in chats (Telegram, Slack).
Silver winner in the nomination “Intranet Promotion Campaign” — Kontur
“I love the collective sense of ownership and freedom to set up communities. Even more impressive is how many authors have undergone training. Great to see parity between mobile and desktop. Support from managers and the CEO is important and not always acknowledged in projects like these.”
Kontur is an IT company that has created digital products for businesses since 1988. HQ located in one of the Ural cities — Ekaterinburgh. The social intranet is well developed and has been growing for 6 years. Self-developed solution. Huge part of the content generated by employees. Social part provides high-developed services for employees, like assistant for arranging business meetings, a knowledge base for training and development. Supported by CEO, intranet helps HR celebrate corporate culture, manage internal communications, collect feedback and convey important messages.
Nomination “Mobile Intranet”
“Mobile Intranet” is also the new nomination this year. Award goes to the projects that create digital comfort for production workers, frontline staff and mobile employees, and for the feature or service that helps solve business tasks.
Gold winner in the nomination “Mobile Intranet” — NLMK
“Excellent, practical set of features for the mobile solution. Strong use of push notifications. I like the mobile use for NFC site entry, such an obvious thing but rarely seen. It’s amazing how much potential value there is in saving a few minutes from tasks when delivered at this scale. My only wish is to see more unique users”.
NLMK is the largest steelmaker in Russia and in the world. The project includes intranet renovation and mobile app launch. Mature approach to developing platform for future growing and scale, product approach, strong and big internal team, as well as well-organized process with external contractors. Mobile intranet supports blue-collar workers in everyday services. Company provides smartphones for those who can’t afford (minimum wage threshold). Box of little things to create digital comfort and dashboard to control mobile intranet’s KPI and metrics.
“Wonderful to see the functionality tailored to the channel (desktop vs mobile version), showing a real understanding of who needs what tools, when and how. For example, integrating work passes into mobile devices — convenient for employees and something that we expect in our everyday lives outside of work. It was also great to see advertising techniques appropriately used to get necessary results. E.g. pop up for workwear. Very impressive project!”
Silver winner in the nomination “Mobile Intranet” — Gazprom Neft, Mobile News Feed
“The most elegant project, both visually and in terms of the decisions and developments made. Cool and very complex promo. Admiration for the leader for conceptuality and non-trivial view. The project is an example of how friendly and efficient business can work with the community, such experience can be successfully transferred to the company’s clients”.
Mobile News Feed is a social news feed that has grown into a fully desktop version due to high usage not only from mobile, but from desktop. Fully based on UGC — authors can easily create news, channels, sign and follow interesting channels. Relaunch Mobile News Feed and transformation into desktop version was done with UX/UI significant improvements based on world best media UX-practices. Strong and resultative promo cases.
“The product has definitely brought company-employee communications to a new level. Excellent UI. Thoughtful work with the involvement of the audience through various activities. Unambiguous problem-solution-fit in the selected category of tasks and problems to be solved”.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Thank you for your inspiring projects. Let your intranets grow, develop, and bring even more benefits to employees!
Read more about the Russian Intranet Awards at awards.rivelty.ru. More case studies and articles you can find at abazhur.rivelty.ru.
If you would like to participate in the #RIawards next year, please email us at awards@rivelty.ru.
